Deathrosez wrote: I was also wondering if getting her a harness and taking her on walks will help build a bond with her?

If she is not used to wearing a harness it's going to take a loooooong time before you can take her out with one. For one thing, she would have to bond with you first and that takes months and months because you have to wait until the honeymoon is over to actually start. Then you would have to get her used to the harness -again, months.

Personally, I don't take my birds out for walks. I don't think it's beneficial to them because they have to go through a huge amount of stress before they are used to it enough for them not to mind too much (not that they ever stop 'minding'].

Okay, I'll make sure Gabby gets to go on her funeral and to be by Gabbys side so she can start her process of accepting that her mother is gone, and i live with other people and i do have other pets but they told me that Gabby is used to having other pets around and she knows the people I'm living with since they have been around her longer then I have, and last time I visited her she was a bit scared but she seemed to understand that I wasn't going to harm her since she answered me when I was talking to her, she was starting to remember the others that were with me that day but she still wasn't sure, I do feel it was a very promising first meeting, she acted the way I expected but I didn't think she would talk to me since she wasn't talking to the other but I was suprised when she did so I feel very confident that we could make a great team and I will make sure she gets her space for awhile and then slowly introduce her to the others, and i will ask for her daily routine and meals and make sure she's getting the things she needs, and I'll keep that in mind about the harness thing, I still want to try it with Gabby, I feel she would love the outside world so much since I live in Colorado, there are all kinds of hiking places and nice relaxing nature views but I just hope I can help her enough to get threw what's going to happen cuz it's never easy, I also wonder if puzzles will help her keep her mind busy, I know they are very smart birds and i know adventally want to get with her to where her and i can volunteer at children's nature center here in our town, to spread knowledge to others about her and wheres shes from and what she can do and to also help her open up a bit and learn tricks, it would be nice to do that with her but of course I'm not going to force that on her cuz I understand these kinds of things takes time and dedication, and I'm willing to put in that time for her expecially since she's a young bird, I just can't wait to make memorys with her

In my personal opinion, taking her to the funeral will just stress her out. I know that Liz says that they need to see the dead person but what really stresses them out is losing the person and whether this happens through simple rehoming or actual death makes no difference to them. Parrots are not explorers. They are born into a large family living in an established territory and they live their entire lives and die surrounded by the same family and in the same territory so, when you expose them to strange places and people, they get stressed out. People who take their birds out for walks start when they are very young and do it very gradually so as not to stress them out more than necessary because the process of getting used to this is stressful to them and make no mistake about it. People would tell you that their bird loves going outside, that he/she is like a small child, looking around all the time, as in a circus or some sort of amusement park but, in reality, the parrot is actually quite anxious and stressed out and its 'looking around as in awe' is nothing more than hypervigilance and fear.

I applaud you for your intentions of using her to teach about parrots but not all parrots are good for that. Some species are more gregarious than others... cockatoos, for example, are normally hams that adore attention and would gladly meet a stranger and dance for him/her just to get a reaction. Macaws are not so easy to read because they tend to be laid back and good-natured so they don't seem to be so stressed out when meeting strangers but I've known of several that were regularly introduced to students that started plucking after a few years (two of them were rehomed because of that). The thing about parrots is that they like their routine and they don't like new things or changes so whenever something as unnatural as meeting new people all the time or being taken out for walks in strange and, as far as the bird is concerned, potentially dangerous places (all strange places are considered potentially dangerous by a prey animal), one needs to be extra careful and go very, very slowly AFTER the human learns the bird's body language like the palm of his/her hand AND the bird is deeply, deeply bonded and trusts its human implicitly - and this takes a good couple of years with a rehomed parrot and only if the person does everything right.

Parrots are, in my personal opinion, the hardest animals to keep as pets... I mean, anybody can acquire and keep a parrot but keeping them happy and healthy and stress free is HUGELY difficult!

I did not think of the stress involved with taking her to the funeral.

I guess all you can do is tell her that her human went "bye bye'. That worked with Rainbow for a while then she was upset that "Grandmom" did not come home. She looked out the window a lot and even called to her just in case she came home and Rainbow did not see her come in.

We have moved and it has been 3 years but Rainbow still calls for her every once in a while.